A pro-Russia separatist holds his gun towards the Ukrainian army position at a checkpoint near the front line in the northern outskirts of city of Donetsk, on July 22, 2014. Photographer: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

July 24 (Bloomberg) -- Separatists shot down two Ukrainian
jets in the same region where a Malaysian Air plane was
destroyed, the government said, as the European Commission
prepared proposals for stepped-up sanctions against Russia.

The pro-Russian rebels downed the Su-25 ground-attack
aircraft yesterday over the Donetsk region, a Defense Ministry
spokesman, Oleksiy Dmytrashkovsky, said by phone. Another
ministry spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, told reporters in Kiev the
planes were at 5,200 meters (17,000 feet) when they were brought
down by a “powerful” anti-aircraft missile. Lysenko said the
attack may have been from Russian territory, an allegation
Ukraine’s government has made before when a plane was targeted.

“This shows the rebels have a pretty sophisticated anti-aircraft capacity,” Karl-Heinz Kamp, academic director at the
German government’s Federal Academy for Security Policy in
Berlin, said by phone. “You need more than a bazooka to take
down a fighter. And it’s one more piece of evidence on the MH17
shoot-down.”

Flight MH17

The incident came almost a week after Malaysian Air Flight
17 was hit by a missile the U.S. says was probably fired from a
Russian-supplied launcher. Russia denies involvement. With the
U.S. pushing Europe to toughen its stance toward Russian
President Vladimir Putin, European Union governments are due to
hear initial plans today from the commission, the bloc’s
executive arm, for an expansion of punitive measures.

The commission will put forward its proposals to a
committee of the 28 EU member governments in Brussels. The
bloc’s foreign ministers called two days ago for plans for
measures that could hit “access to capital markets, defense,
dual-use goods, and sensitive technologies, including in the
energy sector” as they demanded that Russia use its influence
over the separatists to ensure full cooperation with a probe
into the downing of the Malaysian plane.

The U.S. is debating a new round of sanctions on Russia and
pressing the EU to follow up with penalties of its own, U.S.
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said. Putin’s
government is increasingly isolated because of his support for
the separatists in Ukraine, Rhodes told reporters yesterday at
the White House.

Backfired ‘Badly’

“It has badly backfired on them because it’s earning him
complete international isolation and condemnation,” he said,
while giving no timetable for U.S. action.

Yesterday’s attack brings the number of Ukrainian aircraft
destroyed by rebels to at least 16 during the conflict,
according to the government. If verified, it raises the question
of whether Putin’s military is still giving the rebels access to
sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons.

Aircraft operating at 17,000 feet are generally beyond the
range of shoulder-fired weapons, which can typically engage
targets flying up to about 10,000 feet, according to Doug
Richardson, missiles and rockets editor at IHS Jane’s.

Meanwhile, two planes carrying bodies from Flight MH17
arrived in the Netherlands from eastern Ukraine yesterday for
identification, even as questions were raised over whether all
the victims’ remains had been recovered. The Netherlands, which
lost 193 of the 298 people who died in the July 17 downing of
the Boeing Co. 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, held a
day of mourning.

Different Counts

Forty bodies were flown from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city, to Eindhoven in the Netherlands in two military
planes -- one Dutch and one Australian. The coffins were met at
Eindhoven airport by King Willem Alexander, Queen Maxima and
Prime Minister Mark Rutte and loaded into hearses by servicemen.
Fifty-one more bodies will be flown to the Netherlands today,
the Ukrainian government said.

While the rebels said more than 260 bodies were taken by
train to Kharkiv from the crash site, according to the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Dutch
experts said they’d only inspected 200 bodies.

“Securing the crash site to allow access to international
investigators is the next priority,” Australian Foreign
Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement today. “At this stage
the site remains under the control of Russian-backed separatists
–- access negotiations are under way. We stand ready to provide
whatever support or resources are needed.”

Flight Recorders

The Netherlands, Australia and Ukraine are working on a
United Nations resolution calling for a UN mission to police the
crash site, the Dutch ANP newswire reported.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Australian Prime
Minister Tony Abbott offered to send guards to the site,
according to a statement on the president’s website, while Putin
and Rutte discussed how to start an international probe into the
downing of the airline, the Kremlin said in an e-mailed
statement.

Data from the cockpit voice recorder from the Malaysian
plane have been downloaded by the U.K.’s Air Accident
Investigation Branch and must now be analyzed, the Dutch Safety
Board said in a statement. “No evidence or indications of
manipulation of the cockpit voice recorder was found,” it said.
Examination of the flight data recorder will start today.

International Experts

A total of 240 international specialists are in Ukraine to
investigate the MH17 incident, the Interfax news service cited
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry as saying in a statement.

U.S. intelligence officials said two days ago satellite
images and other evidence indicate the rebels attacked the jet
with a surface-to-air missile from their territory.

The U.S. has ruled out involvement by Ukraine’s military --
a scenario suggested by Russia -- because its missiles weren’t
within range of the plane, according to intelligence officials
who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.